The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. VIII, No. II, April 1853) — John Shaqi
The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. VIII, No. II, April 1853)Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons
Religion
The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. VIII, No. II, April 1853)
Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
"It was said by the late stipendiary magistrate at Liverpool, that
he had ascertained that ten such children, under fourteen years
of age had cost, in apprehension and imprisonment, upwards of six
hundred pounds; and, with so little effect, that all of them were
then in prison, and one, only about ten years of age, lay under
sentence of transportation for seven years.
"The remedy for these enormous evils appears simple and obvious.
Let the committee or the magistrate be empowered to send all such
mendicant children to the schools of industry at the expense of
the parent or the parish, and let the worthless parent be punished
if he neglects the sacred duty of maintaining his child, which at
present he is allowed to do with impunity."
We think the friends of our Houses of Refuge could scarcely ask a more
sensible and cogent argument in support of such establishments, than is
furnished in these brief extracts; and yet cogent and sensible as it
may be, it fails to convince gainsayers, or at least, to constrain them
to prompt and liberal action. Within a twelvemonth a project for such
an establishment was lost in a neighboring State, (as it was alleged,)
in some political whirlpool; and the public prints tell us, that a like
wholesome measure was lately defeated in St. Louis by the jealousy
or arrogance of a religious party. We do not vouch for the truth of
either of these statements, but we hazard nothing in saying, that the
problem, how to restrain and suppress crime, will never be solved, till
politicians and religionists lose their selfishness and their bigotry
in an earnest and efficient effort to provide for vicious and neglected
children.
The following good old Saxon principle is adverted to in a report on
Parochial Union Schools for 1851.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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